Shillong, Jan 2: Meghalaya will have to perform at a very high level as they have been drawn with several former champions in Group B of the final round of the 79th Senior Men’s National Football Championship for the Santosh Trophy 2025-26.
The draw was conducted on 31st December at the All India Football Federation headquarters in New Delhi. The final round will be hosted by Assam from 21st January, with 12 teams divided into two groups of six each.
Hosts Assam, defending champions West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Nagaland and Rajasthan have been drawn in Group A.
Meghalaya, Kerala, Services, Punjab, Odisha and Railways form Group B. Kerala were last year’s runners-up and have won the prestigious national title several times, the last being in 2021-22. Services, meanwhile, were champions as recently as 2023-24 and it was they who knocked Meghalaya out of the 2024-25 edition in the quarterfinals.
Punjab have to look back further in the past to the last time that they were winners – 2007-08 – but they have been second on three occasions since then. It has been an even longer wait for Railways – going back 60 years since they last lifted the trophy – but they were runners-up as recently as 2013-14.
Neither Meghalaya nor Odisha have ever won the championship but Meghalaya’s best result came in 2022-23 when they were pipped in the final 3-2 by Karnataka. That team was led by the same coach heading the squad this year – Khlain Pyrkhat Syiemlieh.
Meghalaya had a tough fight in the preliminary group stage last month but managed to qualify for the final round after topping a group that included Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh. Despite the holiday period the team have been training hard for the big stage where they will look to go all the way.
Assam received direct entry into the final round as the hosts, while West Bengal and Kerala qualified automatically as the winners and runners-up respectively of the 2024-25 edition.
The top four teams from each group will progress to the knockout stages. The quarterfinals will be played on 2nd and 3rd February, the semifinals on 5th February and the final on 8th February.
(Meghalaya Football Association file photo)
